The John James Newsletter. <73>

The John James Newsletter 73

We will build them cities and they will have the freedom to leave work and go home but return to work for us every morning for the rest of their lives, as they will own nothing.

John Rockefeller, 1906

The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been two hundred years, and have progressed like this:

From bondage to spiritual faith;

from spiritual faith to great courage;

from courage to liberty;

from liberty to abundance;

from abundance to selfishness;

from selfishness to complacency;

from complaceny to apathy;

from apathy to dependence;

from dependency back again into bondage.

Sir Alex Fraser Tyler: (1742-1813) Scottish jurist and historian.

Where are we in this sequence??

Limits to Growth and the Club of Rome

This was my introduction to understanding the inexorable of our times, after Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring.

The chart may be difficult to follow, but I recommend a careful study. It is central to the migration crisis.

The graph shows the 1972 estimates of our future, and in solid lines the only marginal corrections in these figures since then. The study hinged on reducing resources creating economic collapse triggering population decline. So far, 2030 is on track.

The model analysed five variables: world population, industrialisation pollution, food production and resource consumption. After thirty years of debate, the trends are largely confirmed.

Bandar Mahshahr sits adjacent to the Persian Gulf in southwest Iran where water temperatures are in the 90s. Such high temperatures lead to some of the most oppressive humidity levels in the world when winds blow off the sweltry water.

Saudi Arabia will start running into trouble within two years or face draconian austerity. Social spending is the glue that binds a medieval Wahhabi regime midst unrest among the Shia minority, attacks from ISIS, and the invasion of Yemen. Diplomatic spending is what underpins the Saudi sphere of influence in a Middle East version of Europe’s Thirty Year War.

Germany persuaded European leaders to rally more firmly around what might be called the Berlin consensus by a combination of patient diplomacy and clever brinkmanship and by exploiting alarm over the antics of Greece’s leaders

After billions of dollars spent and more than 10,000 fighters killed,The IS remains a well-funded extremist army able to replenish its ranks with foreign jihadis as quickly as the US can eliminate them. Meanwhile, the group has expanded to other countries, including Libya, the Sinai Peninsula and Afghanistan.